Prologue

      With small, stumbling fingers Phoebe set her torch on the bedside cabinet, then rolled around her bed until her whole body became swaddled by her sheet, all the way up to her ears. Her cheeks burned with heat but determinedly, she began the awkward process again, this time with her duvet. By the time she had finished breathing was difficult but she felt safe, cocooned from the world outside.

      She held herself still for a long time, partly to listen out for danger but mainly because her mummified state wouldn’t allow for much movement. The whishing came soon afterwards. At first it was gentle, a bit like the sound she heard when Mummy held a seashell to her ear but then the rustling began, filling her head until she worried that there would be no room left for her brain. The air around her came alive with the patter, drowning everything else out: the loud tick of the big clock in the hall, the muted conversations drifting up through the floorboards, even the whistle of the wind.

      Everything in her room remained in the same place; the three-storey doll’s house with lifting roof, her white dressing table with the heart-shaped mirror and all the tiny glass perfume bottles lined across the top, and yet in an instant all became unfamiliar. The weak shaft of light from her torch no longer chased shadows